The Banana Story

I was working late one night when my wife said “you can’t simulate this!” and cracked open a banana in her usual way. Challenge accepted. I found an IGES hand on a cad-share hub which I meshed and morphed to a grip shape. Then I just did a spin to get the inner part of the banana followed by some element offset for the shell and some drag to get the basic topology. Then some HyperMorph once again with a real banana in my left hand to mimic the actual bend and details. Less than 30 minutes spent. Guessed the material properties including a simple fracture threshold for the shell. Ran the analysis and tweaked some properties. Showed it to my wife who was generous enough to admit she had been wrong. Next day I sent an animation to my Altair colleagues and to my amusement I got some feedback about the crack propagation and wobbling. I split all elements and added some longitudinal weaknesses. Suddenly it looked right. By coincidence, another colleague then came by with his lunch banana in his hand. I showed him the time killer exercise from the previous evening and he offered to recreate the “load case” so I could film it with my phone. I added the high speed film in HyperView and emailed it to my Altair colleagues.

So the whole thing was basically just my way of teasing my wife and some Friday humor!

Mechanical engineer with seventeen years of CAE experience. Thirteen great years with Altair at different positions. Generalist with interest in conceptual development, consumer products, polymers, optimization, transient simulations and multi physics. Passion for problem solving. Working as a Technical Specialist in the Swedish PD team.

About Magnus Lindvall

Mechanical engineer with seventeen years of CAE experience. Thirteen great years with Altair at different positions. Generalist with interest in conceptual development, consumer products, polymers, optimization, transient simulations and multi physics. Passion for problem solving. Working as a Technical Specialist in the Swedish PD team.